Expanding Communities Project Updates

1st May 2008

Recruitment

All posts were filled during the interview process so the team from the 1st April will be

• F/T Leader: Katrina Middleton
• 35hr Polish CW: Pawel Wojtas
• 15hr Polish CW: Anna Butler
• F/T Russ/Ukrainian CW: Iryna Smith*
• F/T Portuguese CW: Vanessa Palito
• 15hr Portuguese CW: Pedro Garcia

From this you will see that we have not* appointed a Lithuanian speaking worker. This was due to the poor written Lithuanian and Russian skills of the Lithuanian speaking candidates, and the exceptional performance of Iryna Smith, who speaks Ukrainian, Russian and Spanish.

However it will be necessary to offer drop in’s for the Lithuanian speaking Community and translation of the ‘Bulletins’. In order to do this the project board agreed that we should use a Lithuanian speaking sessional worker, which will be funded through cost savings in the set budget. Partly by not renting office space in Chichester, which will lend itself to the more flexible approach to service delivery making best use of the skills of the Project team.

Accommodation

It was agreed to co-locate the team initially to allow for team building and joint working necessary for a quick project start. Their base is in Dove Lodge, Littlehampton, but they have a number of hot-desking options in Bognor, Chichester and the outlying villages.
Venues for regular and occasional drop in sessions are currently being negotiated - the first regular sessions will be delivered from the 12th May 2008.

Induction

The whole team will met on Monday 7th April and use the day to deal with necessary admin, begin team building and consider what needs to be delivered and how they might achieve this.
The aim for the day will be to emerge with:

• a ‘key contacts’ list delegated amongst the team
• an action plan for the first month leading to include a calendar for regular drop in’s
• an understanding of the required monitoring
• some agreement on the contents of joint and individual publicity and delegated roles in it’s production

The Project Board has devised a key contacts list (see attached) and partners have agreed to run induction sessions for their agencies which the team as a whole can attend. The team will work in pairs / small groups to visit and make introductions to agencies, providing the prepared publicity and they will be supported to familiarize themselves with partner agencies websites to assist access to information.

The team will also take on the support of the A Cross Cultural Organisation Recognising Diversity (ACCORD), the production of the multi lingual information Bulletins, a review and amendment of the Migrant worker information packs.

Monitoring

From the information previously collected for the Portuguese Community Workers and used in its evaluation, Susan Carmichael from the PCT has put together a contact form which will form the basis of the monitoring. This will be collected via an excel spreadsheet by each worker and collated monthly by the team leader. The content of this will be circulated and agreed by the Project Board before implementation.

The workers will also register attendance at any group sessions, ask individuals to register with the project for future contact and complete a checklist of issues discussed.

They will also record meetings with agencies and the outcome particularly if further work is generated.
The PSB will be provided with a copy of the contact sheet, examples of publicity and from May, a regularly updated dataset collected from the project.